Text Box: P.O. box 9591 Mobile, Alabama 36691 Text Box: Azalea City Bonsai Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Phone: 251-344-5873 Fax : 251-342-6431 Email: ACBSBONSAI@AOL.COM Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: What’s a Year in Bonsai Text Box: The only people who stay in bonsai year after year are those who see the glass half full not half empty. The year always brings both success and failure. The failures that hurt the most are the trees that have been in your collection for many years. They tend to loose an apex, a branch that changes the design completely or they just roll over and die. You can do everything correctly and still have these problems. Trees are living things and have living thing problems. Some show problems early giving you time to try and find the problem. Some have root problems that kill the tree slowly. You only see problems when it’s too late to do anything. The year also brings all those things that make you love the time you spend with your trees. A close look at your trees this time of the year can reveal new buds all over your trees. That’s tomorrows hope and your opportunity. They are the crop you will harvest the spring months of 2005.Only a very severe weather event can take those buds away from you. A walk around my collection this morning, early in November, I could see lots of green buds and candles on my Pine. My Elms and Tridents have lots of buds and best of all, back buds. My Camellia is about to come into flower any day. The Azalea are full of buds. The Japanese Maples are holding on the their ragged leaves but it’s easy to see the buds for spring are swelling already. The Hornbeam will loose those final leaves within a few weeks to show all the years of branch development and next years buds. As they say “ hope springs eternal.” For those who see the glass half full we never doubted it. Joe.